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Of nearly 2,000 Americans responding to a survey by The Regional Economist magazine of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis zero percent say they favor lifting import tariffs on ethanol. That opinion bodes badly for lifting the $0.54 a gallon tariff on Brazilian ethanol made from sugar cane. This view reflects America’s new dream of energy independence. But is it wise or even ethical for America to shut its doors to Brazil’s hottest new fuel?

Without Brazil, Can US Reduce Gas Consumption 20% Over Ten Years?

This ambitious “twenty-in-twenty” gasoline reduction is the Bush administration’s goal. But without Brazil’s ethanol it may be an uphill battle. With US corn setting record prices this year, it’s no surprise ethanol made from US corn is $2.90 a gallon while ethanol from Brazilian sugar cane is less than half the price at $1.40 a gallon. Even after the tariff, Brazil’s ethanol would be almost a dollar a gallon cheaper than ethanol produced domestically from corn.

Unfortunately, the tariff is high enough that it makes ethanol unprofitable to sell to the US, says Jose Sergio Gabrielli, president of Petroleo Brasileiro.

Next Steps: Brazil Looks at Litigation to Open US Ethanol Markets

Frustrated by this week’s collapse of the Doha world trade talks, Brazilian negotiator Roberto Azevedo told the Associated Press that there was a “strong possibility” that Brazil would lodge a formal complaint with the WTO about the US ethanol tariff. His stance is echoed by the Brazilian ethanol lobby.

“We (Unica) will look at three possibilities: litigation, working with like-minded groups in the U.S. to lower tariffs and bilateral talks,” said Marcos Jank, president of the Brazilian sugar grower’s association, Unica.

“We want to export more ethanol and it’s unfair to see the markets closed,” said Janks.

Does the Brazil Ethanol Tariff Reveal America’s Double Standard for Free Trade?

In an article published by the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, International trade and agriculture policy expert Adam Dean argues that the tariff against Brazil’s ethanol is unethical.

Dean recalls NAFTA requiring Mexico to open its markets to US corn imports with the results that many Mexican corn producers went out of their business. However, with American corn prices hitting new highs, Mexicans are having to pay more too.

By pushing corn exports at a time when more than 20% of American corn crops are needed for ethanol, the price of US corn is artificially elevated, hurting America’s trade partners.

On the other hand, if the US were to open its markets to Brazilian ethanol, less demand for corn ethanol would lower corn prices for Americans as well as US trade partners.

“The key to higher living standards for the poor of Latin America,” says Dean, “does not lie in protectionist trade measures or abandoning ethanol production. Rather, an American commitment to free trade would allow all to benefit from the advances in biofuel technology.”

Sources: Biofuels Digest, The Wallstreet Journal, Cattle Network via Biofuels Digest, Bloomberg, Policy Innovations via ENN.

Read More About Ethanol Trade with Brazil

Brazilian Ethanol - Is It More Efficient or Less Mechanized

Ethanol Use in US and Brazil Rises Sharply

Biofuels Part I: Corn Ethanol Isn’t the Solution

Photo Sources: rfarmer and swanksalot via Flickr under a Creative Commons lisence.

Zimbabwe, which currently faces seemingly intractable social, political and economic problems, has some of the worst environmental indicators in the world with ecosystems either in decline or under severe threat.

Suffice to state, the country did institute some good environmental protection programmes in the decade following the attainment of independence from British rule in 1980, markedly, Zimbabwe has about half of the world’s population of black rhinoceroses, an endangered species. During that period, the government even went as far as adopting a radical policy of shooting poachers on sight in order to protect endangered animal species.

In recent years, however, Zimbabwe has experienced desertification, soil and water pollution, slash and burn agriculture resulting in soil erosion mainly caused by an unplanned land resettlement programme initated by incumbent President Robert Mugabe’s government in 2000.

Yale University’s 2008 environmental performance index (EPI) which ranks 149 countries according to a weighting of carbon and sulfur emissions, water purity and conservation practices, positions Zimbabwe at number 95 thus highlighting the grim state of the environment in the country.

“Zimbabwe’s air is polluted by vehicle and industrial emissions, while water pollution results from mining and the use of fertilizers. Zimbabwe’s cities produce 0.5 million tons of solid waste per year. The nation has been estimated to have the highest DDT concentrations in the world in its agricultural produce,” states the nationencycloepdia.com.

In Zimbabwe, as in many countries in sub Saharan Africa, environmental management tends to play second fiddle to social, political and economic imperatives that ultimately result in environment degradation. In that sense, Zimbabwe is a microcosm of environmental conditions unraveling across much of the continent.

Today, Zimbabwe is experiencing high levels of poverty, disease, political mismanagement and other significant obstacles to development that make regard for the environment the least of priorities at both government and societal levels.

High levels of poverty, particularly in the rural areas where approximately 70 percent of the population lives make deforestation and wildlife poaching a huge environmental challenge due to increased demand for household fuel wood and food.

The rampant cutting down of trees for both fuel and agricultural purposes is perhaps the biggest problem because it negatively impacts the weather, rivers, rain and soil quality.

To make matters worse, climate change, with its disruption of rainfall patterns, has negatively affected subsistence agriculture which is the main source of livelihood and food for 80 percent of the population.

According to analysts, among the most serious of Zimbabwe’s environmental problems is erosion of its agricultural lands, wildlife poaching and deforestation.

By 1992, deforestation was progressing at the rate of 70,000-100,000 ha per year, chewing up 1.5% of the nation’s forestland.

It is estimated that between 1990 and 2005, Zimbabwe lost 21 percent of its forest cover. The country has no primary forests left, and deforestation rates have increased by 16 percent since the end of the 1990s.

In 2001, nine of the nation’s mammal species and nine bird species were endangered, as well as 73 types of plants. Zimbabwe has about half of the world’s population of black rhinoceroses, an endangered species.

Despite this degradation, Zimbabwe has some 1,747 species of trees among its 4,500 species of higher plants. The country is also home to a number of safari animals like elephants, lions, and hippos. In total 270 species of mammals are found in Zimbabwe along with 180 reptiles and 661 birds.

As Zimbabwe seeks a way out of its political and economic morass, it is clear that solving the basic needs of the poor, particularly food security and energy needs, will play a key part to reduce problems such as deforestation and land degradation. In Zimbabwe, as in many parts of Africa, eradicating poverty is an indispensable condition to better environmental management.

But good governance is the bedrock upon which poverty is reduced and the environment better managed.

Several weeks ago, Venezuela President Hugo Chávez provided free energy-saving light bulbs to some low-income residents of Houston, Texas. This magnanimous act probably gained him a few American fans. In late March of this year, he also announced his plan to fund “an energy revolution” in Venezuela.

The revolution has an emphasis on using Venezuelan produced products like PVC pipes to construct homes. Another major component of the revolution includes an initiative to make Venezuela more self-sufficient in food production, thus quelling the need to import food. Projects to provide additional electrical power through alternative energies like wind and solar technologies are also commencing.

The most notable and measurable success to date for the so-called energy revolution, however, has been Venezuela’s effort to change out standard light bulbs across the country for CFLS (energy-saving compact flourescent light bulbs) exactly like those Chávez donated to Texans. So far, 72.3 million light bulbs have been changed. But the story is perhaps not as simple as it would seem (as is almost any story about Chávez and his schemes).

One would think that by using less of their own natural resources to obtain power, Venezuela would be thus gaining economically. Critics of Chávez claim, however, that by distributing free light bulbs, he has provided himself with a smokescreen for not addressing the need to overhaul and expand the country’s electrical power system.

Last year it was announced that the electrical system for the country might break down. The website petroleumworld.com, a source that covers news about energy, oil, and gas in Latin America, describes why this situation will cause more and more blackouts to occur throughout Venezuela:

… last year when the [electrical] system was on the brink of a crisis and its possible collapse was announced, the government’s brilliant response was to hand out energy-saving light bulbs and put the domestic electricity system under state ownership with the purchase of Electricidad de Caracas (EDC), the country’s largest private electricity utility, and Seneca, the electricity utility servicing Margarita Island.

As a consequence of these purchases, not only were resources spent unnecessarily instead of using them to speed up the investments the country urgently needed, but also, a year after the purchase, the services provided by these companies are showing clear signs of deterioration, a fate they share with all the companies that have passed into state ownership.

In other words, they claim that Chávez employed a strategy that would score him more political points with Venezuela’s poorer citizens, for whom energy is expensive– all while avoiding to take on the challenge of a much greater long-term problem.

Nonetheless, this is not to say that the changing of light bulbs is insignificant as an economic and environmental improvement for Venezuela. For citizens it means less money spent on bulbs over time as energy costs increase, and for the world it means less carbon emissions coming out of Venezuela that would contribute to global warming. For Chávez though, perhaps it’s just another detail in his increasingly eventful and fascinating presidency.

Read More About Hugo Chávez’s Shenanigans on the Green Options Network

• World’s Largest Gas Pipeline May Run Through Amazon
• Should We Try a “Buycott?”
• Highlights from the EU-LAC Summit
• Environmentalism in Venezuela
• Exxon Mobil “No Longer Welcome” in Venezuela
• Bush and Chavez Adopt Fair Trade

Photo Credit: Agencia Brasil via WikiMedia Commons under a Creative Commons license

Scientists in South Africa are testing a genetically engineered tobacco plant which detects the presence of nitrogen-dioxide, a marker for landmines, to turn red, in the hope that it may eventually be used to clear mine fields in post-conflict zones around the globe.

The team is part of a joint initiative of University of Stellenbosch and the Danish biotechnology firm, Aresa, which has developed the “RedDetect” bio-sensor technology in a weed called Thales Cress.

The weed changes color from green to autumnal red when it detects nitrogen dioxide leaching from mines buried in the soil.

Because the weed is too small to be seen from a safe distance, the scientists went looking for a more viable alternative, and landed on the tobacco plant, which grows easily in most parts of the world, with a little help from genetic engineering.

Stellenbosch researcher, Estelle Kempen, who is involved with the project says if the genetically engineered tobacco plants prove successful, they would provide an easy way to assess an entire field allowing the safe clearance of land mines and other unexploded ordnance devices on agricultural land.

Many countries around the world, including Angola, Burundi and Somalia in Africa; Afghanistan, Vietnam, Burma, Cambodia (where organizations as Clear Path International are working), Iraq, Nepal and Sri Lanka in Asia; Chechnya and Bosnia- Herzegovina in Europe and Colombia in Latin America, are worst affected by the problem of land mines.

A land mine is an explosive device designed to be placed on or in the ground to explode when triggered by an operator or the proximity of a vehicle, person, or animal.

Currently, land mines are cleared by explosives experts who put a stick in the ground to locate them, or they use remote devices or sniffer dogs, which are all costly and dangerous processes that typically involve a random check of just a fraction of the area .

Field trials for the genetically engineered tobacco varieties are already under way in Serbia, and now the scientists want to assess how the genetically engineered tobacco responds to drought and extreme temperatures, according to the researchers.

But at this research stage, to safeguard against any possible environmental effects of the genetically modified plants, they would be analyzed and destroyed before they began flowering to minimize the risk of environmental contamination.

Tobacco plants usually only produce red plant pigments in their flowers, which arises from a natural compound called anthocyanin, found in fruit such as apples and tomatoes. The technology developed by Aresa activates anthocyanin in the tobacco plant’s leaves if there is soil contamination from explosives such as land mines.

Image credit: CPI at Flickr under a Creative Commons license

The city of Agra in the North Indian state of Uttar Pradesh has a rich heritage and culture. It is the next big city on the banks of river Yamuna after the capital Delhi. The city also has a series of forts, monuments and structures of historical importance that invite travelers and tourists from all over the world. However and unarguably, it is the Taj Mahal - one of the seven wonders of the world, that not only puts Agra on the world map, but also makes it one of the three tourist destinations that form the Golden Triangle (Delhi - Jaipur - Agra).

The city of Agra has stood the test of time as conquering forces have passed through the subcontinent and taken hold of this jewel.  But now that the hitherto unknown force of climate change looms large, citizen groups and the Indian Youth Climate Network have called for a city wide Youth Summit on Environment and Climate Change.

While the world awakens to this global threat, Agra and its youth sleep—unaware of the challenges that lie ahead for a city already beleaguered by the current sad state.  Who will arise to this challenge of global proportions?  Will Agra lie sleeping until it is too late?  The city of the Taj which opens itself to millions from across the world annually deserves better. 

As the number of tourists continue to soar, the city which lays in shambles must have its conscience awaken to ensure that the citizens arise to greater civic duty so that the image of not only our city, but of the nation is not tarnished in the eyes of the world.  One of the seven wonders of the world resides here, let that be an inspiration to make Agra drive the winds of change towards a new vision of a better world, a more sustainable world. 

This above is the vision for the day long Agra Calling Summit on the 2nd of August 2008, which aims to bring together three key stakeholders - the Government, the NGOs and the youth. The challenges the ’wonder’ful city of Agra faces today are not just the global ones.  A toxic drain, the Yamuna, flows through the city.  Traffic is becoming harder to manage.  Monuments of Agra’s resplendent past crumble with neglect, and the populace has no direction how or where to begin to address these problems.

The summit will serve as a network wherein, the flow of information and action is from the experts to the masses through the channel of the students and the youth who have the energy and the vision to bring about change.

With inputs from Neha Chaturvedi, Coordinator: Agra Calling. The Summit is part of the Indian Youth Climate Network’s dedicated attempt to bring together the youth of India for a clean, bright future.

The home of my blessed Toronto Blue Jays have started a program that, just maybe, might get them closer to their goal of reducing its carbon footprint by 6% by 2012. The program is called “Live Green Toronto,” and with $20 million in its coffers, the program is designed to provide financing to those who want to go green.

“We won’t meet our ambitious targets if we don’t have the support of every Torontonian and every Toronto-based business,” said David Miller, Toronto’s mayor, at the Green Living Show last Friday.

Starting next month, Activators – environmentalists working with non-governmental agencies – will begin meeting with Torontonians to discuss project ideas and collaborate with them through the first stages. If, and only if a project moves beyond the developmental stage, a grant of between $1,000 and $25,000 can be approved.

The Toronto Environmental Office is the official agency in charge of negotiating all the criteria for the grants, and has been closely involved with the project.

Toronto is hoping to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 30% by 2020, and by a total of 80% by 2050.

Source

Biofuels have been widely touted as a solution to redressing the world’s overdependence on oil and a significant part to resolving the climatic crisis  particularly in the developed world. But according to new report by Oxfam, the fascination with biofuels may not be a solution to either the climatic or oil crisis and is instead fueling a third crisis: food.

According to the report, interest in biofuels has intoxicated rich country governments to the extent that they are foregoing difficult but urgent decisions about how to reduce consumption of oil.

Sadly, the cumulative effect of the over-dependence on biofuels as a solution to the energy crisis is being felt in developing countries.

“The most serious costs of these policies – deepening poverty and hunger, environmental degradation, and accelerating climate change – are being ‘dumped’ on developing countries,” states the report titled “Another Inconvenient Truth: How biofuel policies are deepening poverty and accelerating climate change”

While biofuels may offer some genuine development opportunities for developing countries the potential economic, social, and environmental costs are severe. So developing countries need to ensure that the production of biofuels caters to the needs of local populations without damaging the environment.

The report argues that increasing aggregate demand for agricultural land will drive the expansion of farming into critical carbon sinks such as forests, wetlands, and grasslands, triggering the release of carbon from soils and vegetation that will take decades and in some cases centuries of biofuel production to repay, at a time when emissions need to peak and fall within the next 10 to 15 years.

“Consumption of oil in rich countries is so huge that for biofuels to be a significant alternative requires massive amounts of agricultural production,” states the report.

According to the report, if the entire world supply of carbohydrates (starch and sugar crops) was converted to ethanol, this would only be able to replace at 40 per cent of global petrol consumption. Global oilseed production would be unable even to reach a 10 per cent share of diesel consumption.

The focus on biofuels has also seen an increase in the conversion of agricultural cropping with crops that favour biofuel production becoming more lucrative for farmers across the world..

Thirty per cent of price increases are attributable to biofuels, suggesting biofuels have endangered the livelihoods of nearly 100 million people and dragged over 30 million into poverty, says the report.

Oxfam asserts that the true attraction of ethanol and biodiesel for rich-country governments is that it is an avenue for continued support to agriculture.

The Oxfam report calls on rich countries urgently to dismantle support and incentives for biofuels in order to avoid further deepening poverty and accelerating climate change.

Specifically, states the report, rich countries should: introduce a freeze on the implementation of further biofuel mandates, and carry out an urgent revision of existing targets that deepen poverty and accelerate climate change; dismantle subsidies and tax exemptions for biofuels and reduce import tariffs; tackle climate change and fuel security through safe and cost-effective measures, prioritising regulation to enforce ambitious vehicle-efficiency improvements.

On the other hand, developing countries should prioritise bioenergy projects that provide clean renewable energy sources to poor men and women in rural areas – these are unlikely to be ethanol or biodiesel projects.

In addition, developing countries should consider the costs as well as the benefits involved in biofuel strategies: the financial costs of support, the opportunity costs of alternative agriculture and poverty reduction strategies, and social and environmental costs, states the report.

Photo Credit: bjamin at Flickr on a Creative Commons License

The developers of Medina Palms, an eco-friendly residential development, have determined to set eco-standards in Africa and are donating a percentage of its income to the international wildlife charity, Born Free Foundation, to help preserve marine life.

Medina Palms also supports a billfish tagging initiative to monitor fish populations in the Indian Ocean by The Billfish Foundation, a non profit dedicated to conserving and enhancing billfish populations around the world.

The Foundation claims that over 90% of marlin mortality is the result of bycatch in commercial fisheries outside the US yet tremendous pressure continues to be placed on oceans from fishing fleets trying to meet the demands of a hungry world.

Set on seven acres of palms with private access to the beaches of the Watamu National Marine Park in Kenya, Medina Palms has adopted stringent environmental conservation principles.

Each property has been designed with a focus on alternative energy systems incorporating both wind and solar power. Solar power is used for hot water and the wind generator for pumping pool water and providing community lighting. Bio digesters minimise water consumption effectively providing ‘free’ water for laundry, pools and irrigation for the palm-fringed gardens.

Large storage tanks holding 120,000 liters of water have been designed to take advantage of the area’s heavy rainfall during mid-year.

Nigel Rowley, the man behind the vision of Medina Palms, says his design was inspired by the ancient spice traders who once made East African coast vibrant and it is built like a 12th century walled village with apartments, villas and penthouses.

The project has also been designed so that buildings are constructed around existing trees, while an on-site plant nursery is being developed to help propagate indigenous trees and plants to complement the village’s existing flora.

‘The Medina Palms Eco Village has been carefully designed with strong environmental principles, to allow us to live in harmony with nature. We are committed to responsible development. This involves significant initial capital investment in green technology, which will bring benefits for future generations,’ said Rowley.

Medina Palms will be donating a percentage of its income to Born Free Foundation in a joint initiative for local coastal conservation projects which will aim to protect local marine life through community involvement in habitat conservation, nest protection and environmental education activities.

The Medina Palms wins conservation accolades and the development could establish the eco-standard for future projects in Africa.

Image courtesy: Medina Palms

One of the great things about living in a developing country like Peru is that you can buy DVDs of new movies for a very low price. For instance, if you want a DVD of The Dark Knight, the new Batman movie, you can already buy it here. Not too shabby, eh?

Of course, you cannot be a stickler for quality with such DVDs, or you will be sorely disappointed. But if you like laughing along with audiences, wearing a hearing aid while watching movies, or pride yourself in your non-humble ability to tell people to sit down and shut up in the theater, then I’ve got a Kungfu Panda DVD that will be perfect for you.

It will probably come as no surprise to you that these kinds of DVDs are made by pirating businesses who use digital cameras to record new movies in theaters. They then distribute them quickly to the masses for profit. Peru, as well as many other developing countries where pirated DVDs are sold will unquestionably suffer over time from the pollution these DVDs will cause. To better understand why the environmental effect of DVDs will be proportionally greater in Peru than in a country like the United States, read on.

In Peru, it’s virtually impossible to rent a DVD. Why?

It’s the economy, stupid!

As there is a high level of poverty in Peru, the only way vendors of movies can make some cash is by selling DVDs that are cheap. The current rate in Peru is about 3 nuevos soles per a DVD. The exchange rate is currently 2.8 soles/$1 US. You do the math.

It almost becomes ridiculous to think how much Americans will pay to own new DVDs. I myself don’t care to own DVDs, as I generally don’t plan to watch movies more than once, with a few exceptions. So I would almost always prefer to rent movies than buy them. In Peru I have little choice though, because renting movies is virtually impossible given the low cost of pirated DVDs.

There are only a handful of stores where you can rent movies in Peru, and there is also not a DVD rental company that uses mail like Netflix. Believe or not, after coming to Peru I have begun to understand that stores that rent movies in the U.S. and other countries actually play a big role in environmental protection <gasp!> Say it ain’t so!

Think about it for a moment. How often do DVD rental stores lease out a single DVD copy to customers? Probably each disc is viewed anywhere from 50-100 times. In essence this means that there is at least some reuse going on. None of this kind of reuse happens in a country like Peru– and this is a terrible thing. Why?

Materials that are used to make DVDs and CDs are incredibly challenging to recycle and are quite bad for the environment.

DVDs and CDs are made from a stew of metals like aluminum and nickel, along with plastics, dyes, and other substances. For this reason, they are incredibly challenging to recycle. After being tossed in the garbage, they can pollute water sources as their components break down and leach gradually into the earth. Needless to say, any kind of pollution generally affects animals, plants, and people badly. The Daily Green recently published an excellent article summarizing the negative environmental effects caused by CDs and DVDs. The article also discusses some potential alternatives that might help alleviate the problem in the future, such as growth in digital downloads of movies.

Read More About How Electronic Devices Affect the Environment and How You Can Recycle Them on the Green Options Network:

• Daily Tip: Getting Rid of VHS
• TV’s Go Digital, but Where Do Old TV’s Go?
• Green Mobile: How Cell Phone Makers Stack Up
• Green PCs and Optimizing their Lifecycle
• What to Do with Your Old Electronic Devices: Get Paid, Help Those in Need!

Photo Credit: © Levi T. Novey

Tucked away in the northeastern most part of India, with snow-capped Himalayas in the north and the plains of Brahamaputra river valley in the south is the diversity rich state of Aruanachal Pradesh. But for its geographic location and other political factors, the state would have been an ideal eco-tourism destination and an ultimate getaway for the rest of India and the world.

Presently, it’s a region hidden away from repeated human intervention, aptly tagged: Paradise Unexplored! Such is the lack of information about the biodiversity of Arunachal Pradesh that the Arunachal Macaque (Macaca munzala) - a species of monkey already known to the native people of Arunachal as Munzala or the “monkey of the deep forest”, remained unknown to scientists and biologists till it was “discovered” in 2004. The so called “discovery” was waiting to happen and it was after more than a hundred years that a new species of macaque was discovered (the last recent discovery being the Indonesian Pagai Island Macaque in 1903).

Now, for the past few years, the Prime Minister of India has had a vision. A vision to make India energy secure. And this is to be achieved beyond just the Indo-US nuclear deal, by tapping the over 50,000 MW hydroelectric potential from the state of Arunachal Pradesh.

What this means is that there are now hydroelectric projects proposed on all the rivers of the state, of varyingmagnitudes - from micro-hydel to the 3,000 MW Dibang Hydroelectric Project. What this also means is that the tribal state of Arunachal, where one requires an Inner Line Permit (ILP) to enter, will now see massive construction work that would, without doubt, put a tremendous amount of pressure on the state’s largely unexplored diversity - both biological and cultural.  

The state is such that after every mountain range, one comes across a tribe completely different from the previous. The Unity in Diversity that is usually the punchline for the Indian republic is adequately represented by the state as well. The state is also the least densely populated states in the country and has been living in perfect harmony with Nature - barring some activities such as swidden agriculture. At the same time, the state is very prone to earthquakes and lies in the seismic zone V (the topmost).

Considering the above, such large scale construction of dams in the state is bound to have irreversible and permanent damage to the ecosystems supported by the state. What is also sad is the fact that the option to explore renewables has been completely overlooked, despite the lower parts of the state having been gifted with massive wind potential.